`Even when Marshal Badoglio took over at the end of November he failed at first to draw the best results from his General Staff's appreciation of the situation and the policy of a creeping advance in mass was continued. But the Abyssinians played into his hands. Instead of waiting, as they should have done, to ambush his columns in the precipitous gorges of the Tigre, they massed to attack him in the open.
`It was child’s play, with his modern armaments, to defeat and scatter them. Once the main bodies of the enemy had been met and routed he had little to fear in the way of hordes of fanatical warriors suddenly appearing from nowhere. Being a first class soldier he altered his policy completely and began to push his flying columns forward.
`They are still advancing. His aeroplanes spray the heights on either side of his columns, as they thrust their way onward, with mustard gas. Not to kill the miserable natives, but to make the heights untenable. A humane form of warfare if one regards it soberly since it prevents continued skirmishes which would
otherwise entail death and many casualties on both des.
`The Italians still have a long way to go and every dusty mile they cover carries them farther from their bases. If the Emperor will succeed in checking them with the masses of new troops he is still assembling, or the Italians will achieve their main objective, Addis Ababa, before the rains come, remains to be seen.' `That's the most interesting resume of the campaign I’ve heard so far,' Christopher acknowledged handsomely. `I take it you were through the European war, Baron?'
`Yes. I fought in it, of course,' the older man sighed. `A hideous tragedy which few of my generation can ever forget.'
`Did you fight against the Russians or the Italians?' 'Valerie asked.
`The Russians, in the early days; then I was taken prisoner. On that account I was also compelled to witness many of the horrors of the Russian Revolution.' `But how interesting,' Valerie exclaimed, `actually to have lived through history in the making. Won't you tell us what it was really like?'
Baron Foldvar spread out his thin, elegant hands. It is a long story and a sad one. For many people, the profiteers and so on, the war was a glorious opportunity. Even for some young men who fought it was my a marvelous adventure, but for me, it was the end of everything. If you wish I will tell . . . but no. `The private tragedy of a stranger would only bore you.'
`No, please?' Valerie insisted. 'I was only a baby t the time of the Great War but it affected all my generation tremendously and so few of us really know anything about it. Please tell us, unless speaking of our memories pains you too much.'
The Austrian smiled for the first time. `How I envy you both your youth and eagerness to hear even of terrible things if it may serve to increase your knowledge. Ah well, my own youth, at least, was unimpaired by tragedy. Twenty two years ago I was a Captain of Huzzars in Vienna.
`What a city it was in those days ! It is still beautiful although only the empty shell remains now that it is no longer the capital of an Empire but only of a Province. Then, it was the gayest, the most romantic city in the world; a perfect paradise for lovers. To drive up the hill to Grinzing in the evening and dine there, with a pretty girl, in one of the wine gardens while the musicians played Strauss beside your table and the fairy lamps twinkled in the trees above. For poor and rich alike what more had life to offer? I suppose I should be grateful that my early years were set in pleasant places and that I lived them during a peaceful well ordered epoch. How right the British statesman, Sir Edward. Grey, was when on the eve of the Great War he said “One by one the lights of Europe are going out.” There is no nation where youth has been privileged to have its fling with the same carefree happiness and security since.
`But I digress. In the autumn of 1913 I met the lady who was afterwards to be my wife. All through the winter I wooed her. Love affairs did not reach their climaxes so swiftly then because young girls of good family were very carefully chaperoned. It was at first an affair of hesitant greetings and shy confidences when we met at big gatherings in the houses of our mutual friends, Then of smuggled notes; apparently chance but, actually, carefully arranged meetings when we were riding in the Prates and stolen half hours at dusk when I clambered over the high wall of her garden.
'The Viennese women are notoriously the most beautiful in the world, perhaps through the admixture of races in the old Austro Hungarian Empire since the upper classes of them all frequented the capital; but among all those superbly beautiful women the lady of my heart was surely the most beautiful. At least I thought so and, although you may find it difficult to believe now, I was considered a very handsome young in those days; also as a Cavalry Officer in one of crack regiments who had been transferred to the General Staff I was naturally much sought after, so I had ample opportunity to meet all the loveliest girls in Vienna.
Fortunately our families were much of the same standing so the obstacles to be overcome before we could marry were mostly the products of our own imaginations. In the spring of 1914, when I screwed up courage to ask her father for an interview, he listened to my proposals with the utmost kindness and a few days later our engagement was announced. In June we were married; having received the blessing of both our families and the good wishes of a host friends. I had obtained long leave from my military duties for the honeymoon and we settled down to enjoy two utterly carefree months in the country on an estate which formed part of my patrimony.
Five weeks later I was recalled by telegram. We had been shocked and distressed by the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand but, in our bliss, we had not bothered our heads about the quarrel with Serbia which followed. Indeed, we had hardly seen a paper. We were utterly absorbed in the supreme joy of possessing each other. That I should wake each morning beside my beautiful young wife seemed a miracle. The new way which she dressed her hair seemed infinitely more important than the threatening note drafted by some elderly diplomat in our foreign office.
'I left at once for Vienna. Few of us had the power realise it then, but one by one the lights of Europe re going out, a civilisation and free intercourse between free people which it had taken centuries to build was to be destroyed in one mad hour, and it does not look as if it will ever come again in our lifetime. Ten million men, at least, were earmarked for death within the next few years, although they could not know it; most of them young, healthy, happy people like myself, and not a fraction of them had the least interest in the quarrel for which they died.
`I resigned my Staff appointment in order to be with my regiment. Any young man would have done the same. But my resignation was not accepted. Instead, I was sent to a Divisional Headquarters not far from the Russian frontier. The Division was composed of Czechish soldiers. The Czechs were a subject people who had always hated Austrian rule, much as the Irish have always been resentful of English domination. Perhaps we should have been wiser to have given them some form of home rule when their Deputies pressed for it before the war. Of course, they have their own republic now, but when the war broke out they were in a ferment of discontent, and they welcomed it as a chance to gain their liberty.
'Instead of fighting for us, whole battalions of them, led by their own officers, marched over to the Russians, with all their equipment and their bands playing. We did what we could to stem the tide of desertion, but in a few hours Austrian machine guns and Austrian bullets were being used to massacre the handfuls of loyal troops with which we attempted to hold the frontier. Within three days of the opening of the war I was taken prisoner by the Russians.'